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The weather is clearing today. Since Thursday it’s been so wet and bleak with the town lashed by a wind so cold. Wellington is a hard place. It does not give itself to you easily. The topography and climate are of a sort that often rebuff people. But she is good underneath and, in fact, can be welcoming. It is a hard place to live in. But if you can survive here I’m sure you develop in a rich and independent way. No nonsense, perhaps. None of the flashy get up and go of Auckland. None of the cultivation of Dunedin or the class of Christchurch. But another quality. I’ll find a word for it one day. Perhaps it’s pragmatism.
—Peter McLeavey to Colin McCahon, 31 August 1976.
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[IMAGE: Rita Angus At Suzy’s Coffee Lounge 1967]
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